Western Short StoryChowdaTom Sheehan

Western Short Story

His
name was Thurrel Chowder, vagrant of sorts, whose name to all came to
be Chowda in a rapid hurry and who was hired by the previous sheriff
of Cannon City to be chief cleaner-upper and major domo of the
municipal jail and sheriff’s office. He was trusted by the other
sheriff and the current one because each one thought Chowda was too
dumb to do anything wrong, anything other than sweep, dust, dump
trash, yell when a prisoner made too much noise, count the prisoners
behind bars every night as darkness descended and made sure they were
all there in the morning.

He
did all things faithfully.

The
day that Chip Grady, known cheater at cards, suspected in a few
murders out on the range, was locked into a cell for clubbing a guy
at cards at the saloon, he said to Chowda, “Listen, Dumbo, when my
girlfriend comes to visit, her name is Sylvia Gold and she always
comes to see me no matter where I am, you be damned good to her and
don’t dare put your hands on her or I’ll get you when I get outta
here.” He pointed his index finger at Chowda, flipped his thumb in
the air, as if handling a primed weapon, and said, softly twice,
“click, click, bang, bang,” the accompanying evil smile on his
face.

That’s
exactly what Chowda told the sheriff, who said, “Don’t worry
about it, Chowda. You know what to do. Don’t do what he tells you,
but what I tell you. That clear?” Then he added, “It’s simple
as pie, Chowda: Don’t let her hands go through the bars of the
cell, don’t let her stand too close, don’t let him try to kiss
her or her kiss him. Now that’s plain and simple, and I’m usually
not very far away; at the saloon, at the bank, down at the stable, or
visiting Molly Chevrus at the edge of town. We might get married
someday, but her husband’s
only
been dead for a year. He was one of those we found gunned to death
out at his campsite, but killed by a sniper at long range for no
apparent reason. That reason may surface sometime down the road.”

Then
the sheriff packed on his guns and went on his tour of things
susceptible to the likes of Chip Grady and others loose from the
noose they obviously belonged in or would contend with someday. “It
was a given,” as they said in those days.

It
was no longer than ten minutes after the sheriff left that Goldie
Silver showed up at the sheriff’s office and said, primly and
properly, that she wanted to visit her boyfriend, Chip Grady, who was
locked up in a cell for a crime he did not commit.

“I tell you,
darling boy,” she said as she thrust her elegance into the
building, wavering, willowy, winsome to an exaggerated degree, I can
do all the favors in the world to anybody I choose. That means
anybody, which, of course, means you too, darling.” She puckered up
her lips and leaned towards Chowda, who backed up immediately and
slid behind the desk.

“Nope,”
he said, and you don’t get too near him and you don’t get to kiss
him even if you want to kiss a guy like that.”

Chowda
hesitated a moment, as if trying to remember something he had
forgotten, then added, “and he don’t get to kiss you either. No
hands past the bars. You don’t touch him and he don’t touch you.
Just like the sheriff said, else I call for him to get back here in a
hurry.”

“Aw,
honey,” she said, “just a little kiss between me and my
boyfriend, one just like this,” and she pinned an open-mouth
message of loveliness on the lips of Chowda, who, incidentally, had
never been kissed that he could remember.

His
hands started to move around this beautiful woman foreign to all his
being, when Chip Grady, behind the bars, said in a deep and serious
voice, “Remember what I said, Kid; you touch her and I’ll get you
Bang! Bang! when I get out of here.” His hands gripped the bars of
his cell like steel traps, and he had shoved his nose and lips into
the space between two bars, saying in hi deepest voice, again, “Bang!
Bang! Kid, when I get out if here.”

Goldie
Silver had thrust herself against Chowda and he had never in all his
life felt or knew such loveliness and softness and newness. She clung
to him desperately, humming her words, “Oh, darling boy, just touch
me a little for the beauty of this moment, and she kissed him again
and pulled his hands upon herself and he felt the gun she had
strapped to her thigh, the upper and inner part, delivery and
deliverance unknown in his mind, strapped in place.

“The
sheriff said NO,” he said. “No tricks, no games. No kissing the
prisoner, and he doesn’t get to kiss you.”

“But
you kissed her, Chowda,” Chip Grady said, as if he was angry or
jealous all at the same time. You got a kiss and I didn’t get a
thing from my own girlfriend, Chowda. You got my kiss. That makes it
all unfair. You got a kiss that was meant for me.” He hung his head
in a moment of sadness, bereft behind bars, beggar in the bastille, a
bummer in the brig, and he had to contend with the dumb ass of an
idiot.

He
had to have another tack, another approach, and he clutched at it; “I
think she’s fallen for you, Chowda, and that breaks me up here in
my own jail, lost and sad and nowhere to go and no way to get there.
I have to leave you two lovebirds alone and it sure breaks my heart
to have to leave her to you, but you don’t always get what you want
in this life, do you, Chowda, lover above all lovers, a Cowtown Romeo
if there ever was one, you stealing my girl from me? But I have to
tell you, Chowda, it ain’t the first time with her. She’s done
this to me before, left me for someone else in one big hurry.”

Chowda
jumped back into the fray. “You shouldn’t talk about her like
that, mister. The sheriff said she was your girl for ages and ages
and I don’t even know how old she is.” It was proof that he could
not grasp the full situation and never would.

But
there in Chowda’s hand was the pistol Goldie had secreted on her
thigh, that Chowda had pulled from the secrecy of her folded skirt,
that had lain there in the mystical secrets pending another murder,
and which became the property of the territory for proving Goldie’s
own crime of loving too little for too long.